The True Story of A Nightmare On Elm Street and The MothmanIn the early part of 1980, American newspapers ran a series of short stories chronicling a serious epidemic in Southeast Asia which claimed the lives of a number of young adults. According to doctors, these relatively healthy men, all without a history of mental disorders, began reporting strange nightmares which kept them from sleep in order to avoid these terrors in their dreams. The consumption of coffee and other drugs helped the men remain awake, at first, but eventually each man went to sleep. Hours later, the men would be found screaming and violently thrashing in their beds before dying from unknown causes. “In the Philippines, it’s called bangungot, in Japan pokkuri, in Thailand, something else.” says Dr. Robert Kirschner, a physician familiar with this strange phenomenon. “But it all roughly translates as the same thing: nightmare death.” While Freddy Krueger was not the reported figure, Southeast Asians believed demons had invaded the dream realm of these men, eventually claiming them in their nightmares. -------------------------------------------------

These stories eventually came to provide the basis for Wes Craven would build his critical success as a horror director and producer. These events would spawn nine movies in a series and eventually a remake that would still keep this generation’s children up at night. It began in mid-November 1966, when two couples, parked at an old World War II dump site that the locals called TNT, say they were chased by a large creature. They reported the incident to the police, and the sightings continued from there. Some said the creature chased them to the ground. Others suffered from bleeding eyes after reportedly seeing it. Many never slept well again. It did not help to calm fears when the town's investigative reporter Mary Hyre, who had devoted much press coverage to the Mothman, died suddenly.